The Unfairness of it All
by loozy
Summary: Looking at him now, Martin has the feeling that Danny doesn't feel too lucky...


**The Unfairness of it all**

**Author:** loozy  
**Disclaimer:** If they belonged to me, Enrique Murciano would be tied up on my bed, sharing space with Michael Vartan... And there would be some slashy goodness in the show...  
**Rating:** PG- 13  
**Genre:** Angst  
**Summary:** Looking at him now, Martin has the feeling that Danny doesnn't feel lucky at all...  
**Comment:** This is my first fanfic in the WaT- universe and in slash... Please tell me what you think...

Out of the dark we came,  
out of the sea,  
The long wave broke on the shore,  
the day broke  
and the night rolled back.  
There we stood, on the land we would call home. 

Out of the dark we came,  
out of the night,  
The first morning in this new place.  
When the sun rolled back the mist   
we rose like a strong wave on land.  
Now we were the people of this place.

What suns through the rain and mist  
What banishes the dark?  
What makes the children straight and bright?  
What makes the mountains sharp?

For the sun is our Lord and Father  
Bright light at the end of the day  
Comfort of home, cattle and crop

Lord of the Morning  
Lord of the Day  
  
Lifting our hearts  
We sing his praise  
Dance in his healing rays  
  
(_Reel around the Sun by Bill Whelan_)

His skin feels feverish to the touch, even though he logically knows he has no fever.  
He feels as if he has the flu, feels the symptoms in his body, but he doesn't have one.  
It isn't the first time he feels like this, and it won't be the last.   
He thinks he is crying, but he also thinks he has run out of liquid hours before, yet for some reason unknown to him, his weak body somehow manages to find the resources to conjure up enough new fluid that produces fresh tears and coats his sunken cheeks with the salty substance.  
He wants to puke, but there is nothing left in his stomach, so he has to settle for painfully dry choking that make his thin chest heave and the scar on his stomach hurt, even though the wound has healed weeks ago. The doctors have told him that it would most likely hurt again after he had the session for the third time.  
Leaning over the toilet's bowl, he silently begs for his lover to come back from the pharmacy. He needs whom he loves with him. He doesn't want to go through this alone. He isn't strong enough.

He hears the door fall shut behind him as he steps into their apartment, listening for any sound coming from one of the rooms as he makes his way to the kitchen to unload the groceries he has bought after going to the pharmacy for the medication. The doctor told him what substances Danny is likely to be able to stomach, so he has gotten enough of it to get him through the weekend.  
6 different soups. Zwieback. Pudding. Bananas. Strawberries. Food for the soul, as he puts it: a pint of Chocolate Muffin Dough Ice Cream, Danny's favourite. He has asked Jenzen about the ice cream and he had okay- ed it. Storing away the groceries and juices he bought, since Danny needed to drink as well, he still tries to detect any sound.   
There is none.  
Panic settles in, leaving him almost shaking with fear.

Vaguely, he hears the bathroom door open. He wants to open his eyes or wave his hand, make any kind of movement that shows the person coming in that he is aware of her/ him. Danny is pretty sure it is a him.  
Him as in Martin.  
The one he needs right now.  
"Danny?"  
A groan erupts from his parched throat and he thinks he has to heave again.  
"Are you alright?"  
What a useless question and both of them know it. But this über- polite behaviour of Martin, something that has been drilled into him by his father, always comes out to play at the most inopportune times, even if he now has lost most of this upper- class- touch. Sure, there are still some traces of it left, something that not even eternity can ever erase, but it it's not as if Danny himself is flawless. Both of them have their faults, and with Martin, his upbringing is one of them. One of the few.  
His father is a poster boy for kindness, combined with a ruthlessness that has made him into a person trying to control the lives of those around him. Of course, there is nothing to be said against Victor Fitzgerald's brilliance and intelligence, the way he handles cases, otherwise he wouldn't have become the FBI's Deputy Director, but on a personal level?  
The man is an ass.  
He treats his son like one of his lackeys, and since Martin had formed a relationship with Danny that went beyond the friendship level, and that had been more or less supported by their team and their superiors, he doesn't exactly avoid him or act as if he didn't have a son anymore, but every time the two men are in one room, the temperature droops a few levels. If Danny is with them, and even if it was in the office, the atmosphere comes close to the Arctic. Or maybe even colder than that.   
He is thankful for those thoughts, brief as they were, have they been distracting at least. He wants to beg Martin to come closer, to hold him and shelter him and make the pain go away. Trying to sum up the last drops of saliva in his mouth, he finds that he has none left.  
Damn it.  
Damn it all to hell. Before he had been diagnosed with cancer, Special Agent Danny Taylor had been a beautiful man. At least that's the answer you get when you asked his boyfriend, Special Agent Martin Fitzgerald. Not that this assessment has changed at all for Martin now, he still thinks of Danny to be beautiful, but he knows what those outside their unit think. Or have thought before the fight against the cancer began.   
Whenever he goes out with Danny, he is the one to usually draw the attention. Not because he wants to, but because there this aura he had that drew people towards him. Of course he knows about this and plays with it, but his cocky behaviour and all the random flirting is nothing Martin has to worry about. Danny is flirting like he is breathing, but at the end of the day, it's Martin's bed he is crawling in at night on weekends also during the day and Martin has gotten used to it anyways. Danny loves him, he loves Danny, it's as easy as that.   
His good looks of course don't help any.  
Tall, lean and subtly muscled with a four- pack without looking like he spends time in a gym which he doesn't, but plays other sports and they go running a lot together, his olive skin, dark hair and eyes reflecting his Cuban traits, he also has a witty charm and the aforementioned tendency to flirt with everyone around him. Only those close to him, Martin, Jack, Sam and Vivian, know that behind the exterior of a man who is quick to shoot off sarcastic remarks and to try to lighten up the mood if the situation warrants it, a man is hidden who is one of the most sensible and sensitive men to be encountered. With more personal demons than all of them combined-  
A groan pulls him back into reality.   
He rushes to his boyfriend's side, taking the thin gaunt face into his hands.  
"Open your eyes."  
No reaction.  
"Damn it, Danny. Open your eyes."  
Mumbling. He has to lean in close to make out what he says.   
"Wanna sleep. Lemme sleep."  
"You can sleep."  
"Pain. Make the pain go away."  
"I brought the pills."  
With trembling fingers, he uncaps the bottle holding the pills. He spills two into his one hand, while the other grabs the bottled water he has brought with him to the bathroom, expecting Danny to be there.  
"Open your mouth."  
"Then I have to throw up again."  
"But if you don't open your mouth, you won't get any painkillers."  
"Can't you gimme morphine?"  
"No."  
He opens his mouth, barely, but Martin is able to slide the two pills in, hold the bottle to the chapped lips and make Danny drink enough to swallow. Five months ago, it would have been a feat to drag Danny into the bathroom when he was unconscious. Now, 20 pounds leaner, it's easy. He can even pick him up and carry him as though he was a baby, into the bedroom, tucking him in, kissing his forehead and trying to hold the tears at bay.   
He was out quick after getting the pills, begging Martin not to leave him, to hold him and shelter and make the pain go away.   
Make the pain go away.   
He hears his cell, vibrating in his jacket pocket and is grateful for having turned it off. If it had woken Danny up…  
"Yeah?"  
"How is he?"  
"Hello to you, too, Sam."  
He sighs, running his hand through the short brown hair.  
"He's been better."  
"I phoned Vivian and we agreed to come over tonight, if that's okay. We could bring something to eat."  
"That's okay, I hope. During the evening, it's usually better, so it should be alright."  
"Great. What can we bring?"  
"Something soft, not too aggressive."  
"Pasta?"  
"Just pasta with nothing else for him."  
"You?"  
"Something spicy."  
It is evil and he knows it, eating spicy pasta that he knows Danny loves, while Danny himself will only get pasta. But then again, if everything goes as it always does, Danny won't have much of an appetite and will probably care less what Martin's eating. He is happy enough when he can hold his food in and doesn't have to dash to the toilet to once again puke his guts out.  
"Good. We'll be over at around eight. Bye."  
"Bye."  
He hangs up the phone and goes back to the bedroom, sits down on his side and watches anny breathe, wondering how much longer he can do that. Jenzen told him that eventually he will have to go to the hospital, that he can't go home after every session of chemo, when the cancer gets stronger, but Martin doesn't want to think about that now. If he starts with this line of thought, he starts to think about the possibility of Danny dying, of not being able to defeat the cancer, and that thought makes him so sick that he wants to throw up.

There is something so profoundly evil of the cancer taking up place in Danny's body when he is still so young. It's not the cancer of the old, that one suspects he might get, but an overly aggressive one that has fun playing with his lover's body, making him weak and loose hope. Of course, every cancer is aggressive, and of course he is biased, but he wants to scream and yell and the injustice of it all. The doctors said, after he had been diagnosed, that the cancer is bad, in a state where it was almost impossible to operate. And still they did. They cut him open, trying to get the tumours out, leaving a scar that slashed across his ribcage and down to his bellybutton. It didn't work that well. They couldn't get all of it. It was too big a carcinoma, too wide spread. Martin asked if there had been any chance to detect the lumps earlier, but the doctors had negated that notion. No. It had been coincidence that the lump had been found at all. It was a silent lump, something that didn't draw attention to itself until the very end, until the person carrying said lump just fell over one day and died.  
The doctors said that Danny was lucky.  
Looking at him now, Martin has the feeling that Danny doesn't feel lucky at all. When Vivian and Sam come over that night, Danny is awake again and, as predicted by Martin, in less pain. They all sit around the bed, eating and talking, making bad jokes and later playing scrabble. Vivian tells about the Amazing Adventures of Joshua, her son. Sam tells about how Jack had gotten out late this morning and had been in such a rush that he put on two differently coloured socks. They talk about the case that had come in on Thursday, but had been solved by the end of the day, then try to stay clear of everything that was related to work. Sure, they all work in the same unit, but that didn't mean that all they had to talk about was work. They all know that by Monday Danny will be back to work until Thursday, when he has to undergo the next session of aggressive chemo therapy and that the whole cycle will then start again.

He awakes to the sound of soft whimpering, and can almost picture his lover before turning around. Face smashed into the pillow as to quieten the sounds of his soft, pain- filled mewling, eyes tightly shut, jaw clenched.   
"You need to get to the bathroom?"  
He starts, having thought to have hidden the pain as he usually tries and usually fails.  
"No."  
Silence for a moment. Then Danny reaches over and grabbed Martin's hand.  
"Can you just hold me?"  
He scoots over, taking the sick man into his arms, softly stroking his hair. He has been given painkillers, and still they don't mute the pain, only soften it. He wants to curse God, but he has given up on God when Danny had come out of surgery and had cried for all to see.  
And Danny isn't someone to show weakness.

Maybe all that he is thinking, contemplating, as he lays there in bed, trying to calm the writhing of the pain- wrecked body in his arms, is bullshit.

But he could have cared less about it.

Oh no, I see,  
A spider web is tangled up with me,  
And I lost my head,  
The thought of all the stupid things I said,  
Oh no what's this?  
A spider web, and I'm caught in the middle,  
So I turned to run,  
The thought of all the stupid things I've done,

I never meant to cause you trouble,  
And I never meant to do you wrong,  
And I, well if I ever caused you trouble,  
  
Oh no, I never meant to do you harm.  
Oh no I see,  
A spider web and it's me in the middle,  
So I twist and turn,  
Here I am in my little bubble,

Singing, I never meant to cause you trouble,  
I never meant to do you wrong,  
And I, well if I ever caused you trouble,  
Oh no, I never meant to do you harm.  
  
They spun a web for me,  
They spun a web for me,  
They spun a web for me.

(_Trouble by Coldplay_)


End file.
